It's my pleasure to publish an interview I conducted with Mr. Chris Dillman concerning game development. Chris is an iPhone and Mac OS X Software Developer with Plaid World Studios, a casual game company. Enjoy!

As you may or may not know, Matt Barton and I are working with Lux Digital Pictures as writers and producers on an upcoming feature film documentary on videogames. As such, we're looking to interview various industry professionals for the documentary. The interviews will be conducted the week of the convention at an adjacent hotel. If anyone has a particular person in mind to interview who will be at GDC 09 in San Francisco next month and happens to know their contact info or can suggest how to get in contact with them, that would be appreciated.

Alternately, if you are an industry professional who will be in the area of GDC 09 from March 23 - March 27 and are interested in being interviewed as part of the feature film documentary, please get in contact with me at bill@armchairarcade.com for more details.

Philip has just posted our interview with Benoit Sokal, designer of the highly acclaimed Syberia games and a half dozen more recent titles. It's well worth reading for anyone interested in GAG development or the state of the genre.

Howard Sherman: Malinche Entertainment's Big KahunaAs many of you are well aware, I've always been a big fan of Infocom and interactive fiction. Although text adventures aren't nearly as ubiquitous as they were back in Infocom's heyday, they are still being developed and published today--and, thanks to the chutzpah of one man, Howard Sherman, they are becoming commercially viable once again. Sherman's company, Malinche Entertainment, is, to quote Sherman, "Infocom 2.0." I think you're going to really enjoy reading the following interview, in which Sherman talks about his ideas and goals to promote and support the interactive fiction community. Howard is a great guy, and I really appreciate what he's doing for an often underrated (and unappreciated!) genre. Big thanks to Howard and Malinche Entertainment for taking time out to answer my questions!

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Chuck "Chuckles" Bueche, a CRPG pioneer who worked closely with Richard Garriott (aka Lord British) on many of the Ultima titles, as well as design his own games 2400 A.D. and Autoduel. Bueche turned out to be an exceptionally articulate fellow, and I think you'll agree that he gave me a fantastic response.

Telengard: One of the earliest CRPGs for home computers.I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing Daniel Lawrence, a pioneer in the CRPG industry who started off writing CRPGs for mainframes. Perhaps his most famous CRPG is Telengard, which was one of the earliest (if not the earliest) game of its type for early platforms such as the Commodore PET, Atari 800, and TRS-80. It features "procedurally generated dungeons" so that no two games are exactly alike, and is set in real-time. Indeed, in many ways it's an early Diablo! In the interview below, I talk to Daniel about these early games and more general questions about what a good CRPG should be. The interview really helped me straighten out some important details about this historic game's development. Enjoy!

Author and Interviewer: Buck Feris Editing: Matt Barton and Bill Loguidice Online Layout: Buck Feris Special Thanks: David Bennett for being the subject of the feature

In 1991 David Bennett created an online game inspired by Terry Pratchettâ€™s Discworld series. The Discworld books have been a welcome departure for many from the sometimes tired and formulaic fantasy genre, providing a satirical look at sword and sorcery novels since 1986. Pratchett has created a world as rich in characterization as it is in one-liners. Bennettâ€™s game world is a lovingly crafted extension of that universe, and has provided pleasure to thousands of gamers for over a decade.